Justice~!, I’m sure the person who made most of the comments on the Twitter excerpt cares. In fact I know he does, because he has posted his thoughts on this earlier in the comments on this blog.
I’m also pretty sure that given the history of the person in question this is hardly a surprise. =)
What you describe here is the very reason why smileys and emoticons are so useful when it comes to chats an internet forums. 
For me, it’s all about direct messaging.
Send your twitter status through IM as “d user to send to message text” Or do it through the web interface… If I’m replying to someone I’ve just replied to, I try to remember to direct message. If it’s someone I know, I’ll go ahead and send an IM instead of the direct message.
I’m shocked that NO ONE has mentioned the direct messaging… It’s pretty crucial when you want to reply to someone, but don’t want to flood public twitter feeds.
And as to the “knowing when to escalate” point you’re making, I think it’s a very important point. Especially when you add in all the social networks I have to keep up with. When should I facebook message instead of email? Should this be a wall post? I think this is all part of the netiquette we are all learning.
“Well, that wasn’t really my point, although Jeff does sell ad space.”
Ad space doesn’t equal content: you have not bought the words on the blog.
"My question was against the metaphor. It also wasn’t an argument.
Just because something happens in a public place, does that mean you have the right to publicize it? This isn’t black and white. Where I live, you can’t take pictures of people out in public and publish them without permission, even though they were in a “public place”, doubly so if it presents the people involved in a negative way."
But I’m pretty sure you can write about them. There probably are a few places where you can’t write about what happens in public but in most “western” countries you’re completely free to do so. So while taking pictures is more of an issue (still, in most “western” countries, paparazzis are not outlawed) that isn’t actually what’s at stake here.
If you wanted to question the metaphor, you shouldn’t be talking about pictures, you should be talking about my describing the people at the nude beach in intimate detail and then commenting on them. And if anything, we should question the nude beach metaphor to start with: how does having your twitter dialog reprinted somewhere else amount to being nude on a public nude beach? The only connection I can see is of someone suddenly finding himself nude on a nude beach and then realizing that he was there, nude, the whole time (“omg, people can read what I’m writing!!”).
“Now, I recognize that once something’s out on the Internet, it can be very hard to kill, but I find it an interesting ethical, or at least etiquette, discussion nonetheless.”
I find the general discussion of public vs. private interesting. The internet part of it is just a sub-part and does not need to be discussed on it’s own, as the internet brings no new ethical problems in the discussion of public vs. private. It just moves the exisiting boundaries a bit.
Regards
Fake
@Anon-E-Mouse
As I wrote in comment to Dan, unless he actually makes YOU pay for it, it doesn’t amount to selling the blog.
There is a big difference between taking something available in the public space, adding to it, posting it on your own blog, then adding some ads and on the other hand selling content that you copied from the public space. If not, I would expect (based on the semi-threats going round) at least one of the authors to get a lawsuit ready.
“But I’m pretty sure you can write about them”
Surely, but playing devil’s advocate a bit: there’s a grey area of fair-use where quoting someone is risky, depending on the context. Just because I post in a public forum doesn’t mean I give up my inherent copyright to my content, unless I expressly agree to such by my posting.
However you certainly should be able to discuss what happened in a general “newsworthy” sense without any sort of moral outrage.
“The internet part of it is just a sub-part and does not need to be discussed on it’s own”
Well I think the Internet so dramatically increases the boundaries and brings to the fore a lot of issues that are minimal or hidden in normal conversation. For starters, the Internet has a long memory.
What is more ethical: describing an online argument, with a pointer to the argument in its original context (e.g. the Twitter stream that contained it in this case), or quoting the argument as an effective, but ethically ambiguous, illustration?
I honestly don’t know on which side my personal opinion would fall, which is why I find the discussion interesting, and why I think the Internet (or more correctly, digital communication in general) has an important part to play.
By quoting someone, you add to the spread of information. Should either or both parties wish to retract their comments, it is harder to do so if people start taking copies of their conversations and replicating them. The Internet enables the spread of such gossip to a truly large range. One can damage one’s reputation on a global, not just local, scale.
Perhaps it behooves people to take the advice of Thumper’s mom when talking in any online medium, or be prepared to have your words, pictures, or voice replicated in the strangest places. The genie’s likely out of the bottle by that point, no mater the ethics or even legalities involved.
Makes me wonder if people would feel more or less comfortable quoting someone’s conversation vs copying their music.
Surely, but playing devil’s advocate a bit: there’s a grey area of fair-use where quoting someone is risky, depending on the context. Just because I post in a public forum doesn’t mean I give up my inherent copyright to my content, unless I expressly agree to such by my posting.
I’m pretty sure I covered that bit with the response I posted to Anon-E-Mouse:
There is a big difference between taking something available in the public space, adding to it, posting it on your own blog, then adding some ads and on the other hand selling content that you copied from the public space. If not, I would expect (based on the semi-threats going round) at least one of the authors to get a lawsuit ready.
We do very much agree on the following though:
However you certainly should be able to discuss what happened in a general “newsworthy” sense without any sort of moral outrage.
You write:
Well I think the Internet so dramatically increases the boundaries and brings to the fore a lot of issues that are minimal or hidden in normal conversation. For starters, the Internet has a long memory.
True, but so does publication in a lot of countries. In Denmark, everything that is published has to be deposited at the national library. It doesn’t matter what it is, if it’s in print it must be deposited. That memory extends FAR further back than the internet - which actually has a tendency to forget, something you should also consider (no, not everything is kept forever on the net. This is one of the fears of researchers: that we might lose a lot of the stuff published in our era because noone will keep a readable copy). So again, what may seem like something new and boundary-pushing has actually been around for a long time - but there’s a new context so the issue re-surfaces.
What is more ethical: describing an online argument, with a pointer to the argument in its original context (e.g. the Twitter stream that contained it in this case), or quoting the argument as an effective, but ethically ambiguous, illustration?
Well, the lack of a link to the discussion is a negative, I’d say, but apart from that I wouldn’t distinguish much between the two in this case. Note that Jeff has NOT literally copied the text - instead, there’s a screenshot.
Apart from that, I’m not too sure there is much of a difference - links provide for spidering and so the information will probably be spread fast anyway.
“Perhaps it behooves people to take the advice of Thumper’s mom when talking in any online medium, or be prepared to have your words, pictures, or voice replicated in the strangest places. The genie’s likely out of the bottle by that point, no mater the ethics or even legalities involved.”
What I find strange is that people actually think they can post something on the net and not have that be public. It’s as if people think “I can tell my secret to 5 people and it will stay with those 5 people”. No, you tell your secret to someone and it’s no longer a secret. That’s the reality - but it’s always been the reality. Why people don’t see that surprises me.
I get that your point is about the efficacy of communication over IM / email / etc. However, I don’t think a conversation in Twitter is inexcusable when Twitter’s so full of “I’m eating a sandwich, yummy!” interjections, anyways.
One thing you don’t catch in the above snippet is that the discussion did come to a productive end. I felt that all participants profited from the discussion, and it was interesting from my point of view (mostly watching, chiming in occasionally). Folks watch political debates on TV, why not software development debates on Twitter?
I’ve got to agree with haacked… I don’t follow either of these twitters, it felt a lot like you were airing their personal communications. Just from reading it, I felt a bit embarrassed.
The analogy that came to me was hearing someone arguing with someone on a cell phone. Etiquette suggests you don’t turn to a third party to discuss the conversation.
This is not to say there’s something wrong with what you did, but I assume you consider haacked to be at least a peer. So it might be good to at least acknowledge that others might not agree with your cavalier “public is public” statement.
I think this article might have had a better feel if the twitters you showed were your own.
It’s best to think of Twitter as a tuner or a browser in that the value depends on who you watch. Most television is stupid, but some shows are worthwhile. Most websites are stupid, but I’d be lost without the intarwebs. The value of Twitter comes from the people - and the conversations - that you follow.
@Rudolf_the_Red
Ha! I see your Nader hijack and raise you a Ron Paul+Howard Dean. Mao will never die! Oh, wait…
I thought the entire point of having discussions over Twitter was to make sure that all the people that already love (err, ‘follow’) you can see what a smart guy you are and how you are definitely in the right. If not, why else would you have it on Twitter instead of IM or e-mail?
And God knows Scott just wants to be loved.